Planning Efficiency: Technology provides flexibility, options at LAS

Article
Aug 8, 2004

Managing Airports Today

Planning Efficiency

Technology provides flexibility, options at LAS

By Jodi Richards

August 2004

LAS VEGAS — As some 6,000 people relocate here every month and tourism to the region grows to new heights, officials at McCarran InternationalAirport are taking every precaution to ensure it’s prepared to handlethe traffic. According to Randall Walker, director of aviation, andSamuel Ingalls, assistant director of information systems, common use
and other technology enhancements lead the charge in meeting this challenge.

Passenger traffic is expected to reach 37 million in 2004 at LAS. The
terminal is capable of handling 42 million annual passengers.

Walker, a Las Vegas native, counts “keeping ahead of the growth” as
the airport’s major challenge, aside from the aftermath of 9/11. “In
the ‘90s,” explains Walker, “the compounded growth rate
[of passengers] was 6.5 percent. That’s phenomenal. From 1990 to
2001 we went from 19.1 million to almost 37 million passengers. Our
whole goal is to build and put facilities in place that will accommodate
that kind of volume.”

Because of the rapid growth, Walker says the airport is under construction
almost non-stop.

The airport experienced 3.6 percent growth in 2003 over 2002, which
is still down from its peak in 2000. “We’re back up and most
of that growth came in the last four months. So far this year, for the
first four months, we’re up 14.8 percent,” says Walker.

For the short-term, explains Walker, the airport has the necessary
facilities in place to handle the growing capacity. However, because
Las Vegas is such a tourist-based economy, what he’s not sure of
is the airport’s ability to keep ahead of the growth.

Randall Walker (left) and Samuel Ingalls

He says there are some 9,500 hotel rooms currently under construction.
And, if these rooms are successful, no doubt more will be added. “They
can get [hotel rooms], from the time they announce them to the time
they open in about two years,” says Walker. “We’re a
government agency. And as good as we think we are, we can’t bring
things on line that quickly. We can plan for a certain level of traffic
on our master plan, but when we find out [more hotels are adding rooms],
from the time of getting an architect, doing the design, bidding it
out, to construction, we’re
usually a year or two behind.”

The airport is currently capable of handling 42 million passengers
annually. For 2004, the airport is projecting 37 million total passengers.

Flexibility of Common Use
Constant construction isn’t the only way to combat the capacity
crunch. The airport is using technology to address many of the concerns,
particularly, common use technology.

“We want to make sure that we are using our terminal facilities
as efficiently as we possibly can,” says Ingalls. “And
there are huge savings in that.”

According to Ingalls, LAS’s Terminal D cost some $12 million
per gate to construct, which came on line about five years ago. “In
terms of the CUTE (common use terminal equipment) system, it costs
less than one gate in that terminal building. We’ve achieved
far more efficiency [with CUTE].”

The efficiency comes through not just with gates and counters, but
with the entire shared network, which Ingalls calls the “foundation
for everything that operates here at the airport.” The CUTE
systems, SpeedCheck systems (the airport’s common use check-in
equipment), flight information display systems, baggage information
display systems, telecommunications, and more all operate on the
shared infrastructure.

Planes and tower at McCarran International Airport

LAS chose to employ ARINC’s MUSE (multi-user system equipment)
for its CUTE system. Ingalls explains the system operates on a
common PC interface and “generally emulates all of the functionality
of [each airlines’] reservations systems. The keystrokes
are usually the same, to the extent that they can be. What they
see on the screen is essentially their system.”

The CUTE system allows the airlines to seamlessly check in and
access all their passenger information and other applications from
virtually any place in the airport, Ingalls explains.

As each airline signs on or signs off from a gate position, the electronic
signage changes appropriately, enforcing the airline’s brand
presence. “To their customer,” says Ingalls, “they
have no idea it’s not a dedicated airline gate or facility
because they’re looking to signage; and it looks and feels
like that airline’s gate. It’s really transparent
to the customer.”

Ingalls says the savings to the airlines has accrued in a macroeconomic
sense. “If we have to build terminal facilities, by in large,
it’s the airlines that foot the bill for those new terminal
facilities.” With
common use, he says, “we’re able to save them hundreds
of million of dollars in brick and mortar costs, which allows
us to continue keeping their rates low here.”

The SpeedCheck system allows travelers not checking bags to quickly check in
for flights on nearly all airlines at LAS.

According to Ingalls, planners at the airport have suggested
CUTE has resulted in a 15 percent gain in efficiency. “And that’s
significant,” he says. “That’s not anything
to be sneezed at — when you’re talking about
an operation of this size — when you pick up 15
percent efficiency at a cost that is considerably below
anywhere near what it would cost to build that additional
capacity into the airport system.”

Ingalls explains common use equipment allows the airport
to make the most of gates at all hours of the day. For example,
he says, Southwest Airlines is one of the few at LAS that does
not have a late night operation. “That’s
a very busy time for us at the airport, so it’s really
important to us that we be able to use those late night facilities
that they’re
using very efficiently during the day.”

The efficiency savings is also being realized currently due
to a construction project which is replacing some concrete
and installing a hydrant fueling system. “It’s very easy to take
the airlines and shift them over to other gates,” says Ingalls. “In
the old course of doing business, given that project, we would have had to
pay to rip out all of their proprietary equipment, install it somewhere else,
and probably install cabling, conduit, and everything to
hook into their data systems over in that temporary location, then rip it all
out again and put it back where it was. It’s just
wasted cost.”

The airport’s initial investment in the CUTE system was some
$9 million.

Wavy lights at D gate LAS

Common use is also employed on the passenger side of operations. Those
passengers without bags to check, roughly 30 percent of LAS travelers, can
utilize the SpeedCheck kiosks located in the terminal, the parking facility,
and at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Some 13 airlines at LAS are already using the CUSS (common use self-service)
kiosks. The airport has invested some $1.5 million in the
CUSS system and Ingalls says the next phase will be to move the kiosks into
the ticket counters. Some of the carriers have installed their own
kiosks, with the agreement that they will remove them when the airport
is prepared to replace the kiosks with common use equipment.

Through an airport operations data base (AODB), other efficiencies
are also provided for the airport. Ingalls says the data base, which
gathers information directly from the airlines or from the FAA flight
data center, serves a number of purposes, including FIDS, an automated
voice response system for flight announcements, and baggage carousel
assignment.

Explains Ingalls, “The baggage carousel assignment system refers
to that data in the database and looks at those flights as they’re
coming in and makes carousel assignments based on the actual arrival
times of [the aircraft].” Rather than have a carousel dedicated
to one airline, he says, the system is actually looking at the flights
and “in accordance with a specified algorithm, makes the carousel
assignments.” The system is capable of determining whether the
flight is a wide- or narrow-body plane and knows how many flights to
put on each carousel before moving to the next. “If you look
at the percentage gained in terms of efficiency use in the terminal,” says
Ingalls, “we’ve probably seen more toward a 25 percent
increase in efficiency.

Looking Ahead

Creative planning and common use technology will only carry
McCarran International Airport so far in its effort to keep up
with growing traffic. Therefore, airport officials have plans to
construct a second Las Vegas airport, projected to be operational
in 2017.

McCarran International Airport has some 2,800 acres, says aviation
director Randall Walker. And on this site, the airport has the
ability to grow to 52 million passengers. Beyond that, the airport
will be “essentially out of capacity here,” he says. “So
what we’re looking for long-term is another airport site
to build a second airport; not a replacement airport, but an additional
airport.”

Walker says the airport purchased some 6,500 acres some six miles
east of the California border on Interstate 15. The land was
purchased for the sole purpose of building an airport. If the community
of Las Vegas does not continue to grow at such explosive rates,
and the airport does not need to be built, or if the environmental
study shows the land to be not suitable for an airport, the $20
million plot of land will revert back to the federal government.

“We know it’s going to be a tough project to build
because of the environmental [aspects],” says Walker. Additionally,
the airport will have to anticipate growth at LAS so the additional
airport will be open at or near the same time LAS reaches capacity. “That’s
a great juggling act,” says Walker.

As far as how a new airport would differ from LAS, Walker explains
officials would “try to match the right kind of traffic up
with each airport.” He says international traffic would probably
be directed to the new airport. Also, charter traffic would be “perfectly
suited” for the second airport.

The ultimate build-out of the second airport is 35 million annual
passengers. “So this [LAS] will still be the bigger airport,
with the lion’s share of the traffic,” says Walker.